Episode 264 -- Birdsong Time Capsule: Allison Doupe, MD, PhD

On February 5, 2009, we were joined by Allison Doupe, who was Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Physiology at the University of California San Francisco. Allison talked with us about the value of learned birdsong as a model for sensory and motor learning, the brain circuitry responsible for learning, remembering and controlling the song, and the importance of variability in adapting the song to changes in animal state or the environment. Somehow, that conversation was never posted. I encountered it while searching through old files looking for something else, and just recently heard it for the first time. It is a wonderful conversation with a creative and insightful neuroscientist, and the information is still current, so I am posting it now. Stay on after the podcast to listen to an outtake containing a conversation between Allison and Michael Farries on the pallium, the functional equivalent of the cerebral cortex birds, and whether birds do or do not have a cerebral cortex. Guest: Allison Doupe, University of California San Francisco Participating: Michael Farries Department of Biology, UTSA Kelly Suter Department of Biology, UTSA Nicole Wicha Department of Biology, UTSA Carlos Paladini Department of Biology, UTSA Rama Ratnam Department of Biology, UTSA Todd Troyer Department of Biology, UTSA Host: Salma Quraishi, Department of Biology, UTSA acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music